


(Re)Written

by madsthenerdygirl



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Actually More Like a Bittersweet Ending, Also Canonical Character Death, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Because I Can Never Keep Rufus Dead, F/F, F/M, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Must! Save! Rufus!, Polyamory, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, but it's okay!, did I mention I'm sorry?, i made myself cry writing this, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 19:45:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14859096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/pseuds/madsthenerdygirl
Summary: Lucy’s words are a curse. Flynn’s are his damnation. And Wyatt has none.





	(Re)Written

**Author's Note:**

> This was based on a prompt given to extasiswings, who outlined the plot and then said I could go crazy with it, so I did. The original prompt was "Soulmate AU + Sleep Intimacy AU."
> 
> Prompt can be found here: http://extasiswings.tumblr.com/post/174119821096/garcyatt-24-soulmates-au-95-sleep-intimacy

Flynn found his soulmate.

The words were written on the skin of his inner wrist, a pretty common place. They said, _you look like you need this more than I do._

When a woman handed him a coffee on his first day at work and said, “You look like you need this more than I do,” he’d felt something inside of him spark.

Lorena was perfect. She was sassy and gentle and tough and forgiving. It had taken him months to find the courage to ask her out. Finally, she’d laughed and had to do it herself.

He could still remember about three months into their office flirtation when he’d finally gotten around to asking what her last name was.

“Flynn,” she’d said. “If you play your cards right.”

And by God, through some miracle he had played them right.

Flynn found his soulmate.

So whatever these new words on his chest were, he wasn’t buying them.

They appeared two days after Lorena and Iris died: _I think you’ve had enough._

He didn’t know what they meant, and he didn’t care. He had his soulmate, and he lost her. It was as simple as that. These… other words, it was just the universe messing up. The universe did that sometimes. There were people without soulmarks, people who got together and fell in love despite their soulmarks not matching, and people who found their soulmate only to break up or have it not work out. There were even platonic soulmates, people who met one another and just became best friends or something instead.

This was just another mess up. That was all.

And then he found himself in a bar in São Paulo. He’d been on the run for what felt like ages. Rittenhouse wasn’t content just with killing his family. He’d made it clear that he wasn’t backing down, and so now they were after him.

Sometimes he wondered if he should do the job for them. He wouldn’t let them be the ones to kill him, oh no. They didn’t get that satisfaction. But what the hell else did he have to live for? He’d abandoned his friends. His family was gone. His mother was long dead. Lorena and Iris… it was like a burning fever in his chest, like he had an infection, some part of his soul slowly rotting inside of him.

Why not just rejoin them?

But then he’d been in that bar, and a woman had walked in. He knew immediately that she was a soldier. It wasn’t the cropped-short dark hair or the sharp cheekbones that told him so. It was the way she walked. She was wearing a dress and heels but God, it might as well have been armor. The red of her lipstick looked like blood.

People parted out of her way like the goddamn Red Sea. Flynn forced himself to look away. He didn’t want trouble, and this woman was trouble personified, he could tell.

Then he felt a small, warm hand on his arm. Another hand, not his own, wrapped around the bottle he was drinking. It was his third. Or maybe his fourth. Who was counting?

“I think you’ve had enough,” the woman said.

It wasn’t just the words that she said, although that sent a jolt straight through him, a spark he hadn’t felt since he’d met Lorena. It was how she said them, her voice full of soft, aching sadness and warmth. She spoke to him like he was familiar to her. Like they knew each other.

He turned to look at her, and underneath the makeup and glittering eyes he saw something else. Something fragile and lost.

It called out to the broken lost something inside of him, and he let her take the bottle away.

She told him she knew who he was. Who he was running from. He probably should’ve figured her for an assassin but there had just been something about her that made him trust her.

(It wasn’t the words, he told himself. It wasn’t the mark. He’d already found his soulmate, and he’d lost her.)

Lucy Preston was her name. Lucy. The name fit her. She told him enough for him to believe her, and then she said, “Let’s go somewhere a little more private.”

She didn’t say it like a come on, and he didn’t interpret it that way. He took her back to his hotel room, where she showed him her journal, told him of how it would help him to defeat Rittenhouse and get his family back.

“Why are you doing this?” Flynn asked her. They were sitting on the edge of the bed, the journal in between them. “Why me?”

Lucy looked up at him, and gave him the sweetest, most heartbreaking smile. “Because you’re the one that I trust.”

He dared any man not to kiss her after that.

She clung to him, held him like she knew how, touched him like she’d done it a hundred times before. She was so small and soft in his arms and he wanted to let her consume him. She clung to him, and once or twice he thought he felt something warm and wet fall onto his shoulder, and if he accidentally said Lorena’s name once or twice, she didn’t comment on it.

But her words weren’t on him. Her words were on his, right there on his chest. She didn’t comment on those, either. But his words didn’t mark her.

It was just the universe messing up.

She kissed him goodbye once, twice, ten times, like she couldn’t bring herself to leave. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “You’ll see me again.”

Something about her words struck him as bittersweet.

Then she left. And when he saw her again, she was different.

Flynn found his soulmate.

 

* * *

 

Lucy’s soulmate found her.

She got her soulmark wrapped around her hip: _It’s time we talked._

Rather ominous, she’d always thought.

If only she’d known how ominous.

Standing in front of the wreckage of the Hindenburg, hearing the screams, smelling the—dear God—burning flesh as dozens died, this man, this monster, stepped over to her, loomed over her, and said,

“It’s time we talked.”

No. That was all she could think—no, this murderer, he was in no way her soulmate. She wouldn’t accept it. She was good at not accepting the second-rate things that life tried to hand to her but this? This was the ultimate kick in the teeth.

This man was not her soulmate.

She didn’t try to throw herself at Wyatt or anything. But she didn’t fight her attraction to him, either. And maybe… maybe she pushed herself a little farther in it than she might have otherwise.

They had a few talks about it, the three of them. Her, Wyatt, and Rufus. They tended to all get philosophical after their trips.

“What if your soulmate is in the past?” Rufus asked. It was all well and good for him, Lucy thought. Jiya’s words were wrapped around his bicep, and his first words to her were etched around her ankle. “I mean—we time travel, right? So what if your soulmate’s in the 1700s or something?”

“Well that’s not possible,” Lucy replied. “Your words go away when your soulmate dies. So, your words would be on them, but their words wouldn’t be on you.”

“I feel bad for the people with common phrases,” Wyatt said. “How many people do you bet have ‘hi, it’s nice to meet you’ on them?”

“What did Jess have?” Lucy asked.

“Jess’s were… odd.” Wyatt cleared his throat. “I, uh, I don’t have any. I’m a blank.”

Some people said that people without soulmarks—the so-called blanks—weren’t supposed to be with anyone else. Lucy had never believed that.

“But she had words?” Rufus asked. “Were they yours?”

“No, they said… ‘why are you doing this’.” Wyatt shrugged. “She never met her soulmate. We got together in high school, y’know, how you do. Just ‘cause the person’s not your soulmate doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, right? But she never found hers. And I don’t have anyone, and I didn’t have anybody in my life, and so we just sort of… stayed together.”

He paused, that bitter expression coming into his face again—the one that arrived whenever he started to blame himself for Jess’s death again. “Maybe I should’ve let her go and find them. Maybe she’d still—”

“It’s not your fault,” Lucy told him. It felt right to put her hand on his arm.

“The guy who killed her, it’s his fault,” Rufus said. “Not yours, man.”

When they finally slept together, Wyatt asked her about her words. Lucy felt an initial rush of fear, thinking he’d know, thinking he’d somehow blame her for it—but then she remembered that Wyatt hadn’t been there when she and Flynn had first talked. He hadn’t heard them.

“Have you found them?” Wyatt asked.

Lucy shook her head. “I don’t want to.”

He looked surprised at that. “Why not?”

She smiled, feeling warm and happy and content for the first time in months. “I have you.”

Then Jess had appeared.

“Can your soulmate change based on our time travel?” Rufus would ask. “Are we making and breaking soulmates as we do this? Are we going to come back and find different words on our bodies?”

She looked, and looked, and looked, hoping, wishing, praying. _Change. Change. Change. Vanish altogether._

The words stayed the same.

But something else changed.

Flynn started reaching out to her. He started following her orders. Started saving her life. He sat with her when she was sad, and held her when she cried. He sat up and talked with her, no matter how late it got. He let her sleep in his bed even though he had to be messing up his back sleeping in the chair like that. He made her coffee and made her laugh.

And Wyatt… Wyatt drifted farther away.

Which was more important? The one who had his words on her skin? Or the one she’d chosen? How was it that the latter was the one drifting away and the former was the one who was making an effort? Were her words on his skin?

And then she asked him, “Why are you here?”

Then he pulled her to him, rocked her as she cried—for her mother, for her sister, for Rufus, for Wyatt, for the exhaustion she thought she’d never get rid of.

And she clung to him and thought, oh.

Lucy’s soulmate found her.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt was a blank.

He had no words, he’d never had them. He was glad, actually, at least while he was growing up. He hadn’t wanted to inflict himself and his life on someone else, and he’d seen how his dad got after Mom died. Losing a soulmate was no excuse for turning out the way Dad did but man, it couldn’t have helped.

And then he got older, and… it wasn’t easy to see people pairing up. To watch the instant spark he saw in people’s eyes when they met their soulmate.

He kept waiting for the day that Jess would meet hers, but she… never did.

(He didn’t know then, and neither would Jess, that she would die, and come back, that her soulmate would vanish, and be brought back. But how could they. Time travel hadn’t even been invented yet.)

And then he felt lucky, because it didn’t matter that he was a blank. It didn’t matter that Jess had other words. She’d chosen him. And that meant more to him then just some stupid piece of fate or destiny.

But he did wonder—if that was why they fought. If that was why he struggled to talk about how he felt. If maybe things would go more smoothly if they were soulmates. If maybe he wasn’t really giving Jess what she needed. If he couldn’t give anyone what they needed.

And then he lost her and… well, he couldn’t be lucky enough to have someone else choose him, could he?

For while he didn’t want anyone to choose him. He just wanted Jess. Maybe he was lucky, he thought. He hadn’t had words in the first place, so he never had to watch them vanish.

But Lucy. Luminous, beautiful, marvelous, Lucy. Lucy who made him want to write her own words into his skin. He had her first words to him memorized, even if they weren’t marked on his body.

She had other words, words that were a little ominous if you asked him (but then so had been Jess’s) but she chose him. She _chose_ him.

And then. Jess.

He wanted words so badly. He wanted them to tell him what to do. He wanted them to be a map, to mark his way, point him in the direction of which woman he was supposed to be with.

But there were no answers. There was no map.

Because Wyatt was a blank.

 

* * *

 

“Would you still be in love with Jiya, if you had different words? Or no words?”

“Yes.”

“But you could just be saying that, because you have the words.”

“No. I don’t think the words are an ending. I think they’re a beginning. It’s saying, here’s one possibility for you. We’re giving you this option for free. But if you don’t take it that’s fine. You’ve just got to find the others on your own.”

“I… never thought of it that way.”

“I don’t think most people do.”

“But what if—I mean, why would you pick a different path? When there’s an easy one right in front of you?”

“I don’t know. Why did a guy walk on the moon? Why did women push for the right to vote? Why do we take a knee? The easy way isn’t always the better way.”

 

* * *

 

Lucy’s words weren’t on him.

He slept with her. He saw, there weren’t any words on her. Not any at all. Was she a blank? Like Wyatt?

He’d seen Wyatt once or twice, what with the one bathroom and changing into the clothes they stole on missions. Not a single word to mark the skin, not even after Jess got back, when her words should have re-formed on Wyatt’s skin.

Unless, Wyatt was from his original timeline, and that meant the words wouldn’t re-form because in his timeline Jess was still dead…

“Take a picture,” Wyatt grunted. “Maybe it’ll last longer.”

“Maybe I will,” Flynn shot back, not thinking about it.

But then he glanced again and thought…

Well, he knew why Lucy slept with the guy.

That was all.

 

* * *

 

“We’ll get him back, Jiya.”

“You don’t _understand_. I’ve looked for him, all through time, everywhere, and he’s not there.”

“Jiya—”

“His words, Connor, his words are _gone._ I checked and they’re not there, they’ve just vanished, Connor, he’s _gone_.”

 

* * *

 

She chose to love Wyatt. But she didn’t. You couldn’t choose love. If you could, then she would’ve opted out of it once Jess came back.

So was it really fair of her to blame Flynn for making her feel for him, when Wyatt had done the same?

Flynn might not even have her mark on him. He’d certainly never said anything about it. He could be her soulmate but not vice versa.

She couldn’t stop loving Wyatt. She tried. She was so angry with him, she wasn’t even sure if she trusted him anymore, but she loved him, still.

If she couldn’t choose to start it and she couldn’t choose to end it, then who was to say that falling for Flynn was any different? Hearing him speak those words hadn’t magically made her fall into his arms. If there’d been an instant connection like that, she would’ve bought everything he said about Rittenhouse right away and hopped on the Mothership with him.

She certainly hadn’t fallen in love with those words. Not with that man standing proud and unyielding and furious in front of a burning wreck. She’d fallen in love with the man who gently buckled her seatbelt when she was injured. Who praised her when she stood up for herself. Who made her laugh. Who touched her with such gentleness it made her ache.

She had chosen Wyatt. And yet, she hadn’t.

And so she could choose Flynn.

Screw soulmarks, anyway.

When she kissed him, they were in his room. In the ‘new’ bunker, although new was a relative term. She hadn’t said anything, she’d just closed the door behind her and kissed him, going up onto her tiptoes.

His mouth opened for her on what sounded like a sob, and his hands touched her like she’d fade away if he didn’t hold on. Maybe there was something to this whole soulmates thing after all because he seemed to know exactly the spot underneath her jaw to suck that made her spine melt, the way to tug her hair that made her shiver, how to kiss her until she was clawing at his arms.

When she got his shirt off she didn’t understand the words on his chest.

_I think you’ve had enough._

They were odd words, and she was going to ask, but then Flynn got her pants peeled down and saw her hip.

He froze.

“You…”

“Yes.” She nodded. “It’s you.”

Flynn made a wounded noise and pressed his mouth to the words, running his tongue over the ink, tracing the letters. When he pulled back, his eyes were dark. “But you didn’t,” he whispered.

“I didn’t what?”

Flynn shook his head. “You _didn’t_.”

He kissed her, then, and she never got to ask what it was she didn’t.

But when he slowly made his way down her chest, when he gently pushed her legs apart, and his hand fit over the curve of her hip, over the words, and he licked into her, and he knew, he _knew_ how to make her shudder and scream…

Oh. _Oh_.

_I was in a bar…_

_I think you’ve had enough…_

_You didn’t._

She grabbed at him, said his name, and not just because he was making her see stars with his mouth but because when he had first met her, those were the words he had, he was hers but she was his but she’d been blank… she _didn’t have any words_ …

But she chose.

A future version of her chose to go back in time. Chose to trust Flynn. Chose him, out of all the people she could have picked, as the one. And in doing so, she had made them soulmates.

She had chosen.

Suck on that, fate.

 

* * *

 

He knew that she’d figured it out.

Lucy was smart, the smartest person he knew. He’d be surprised if she hadn’t figured it out eventually. But she never said anything. She just traced the words on his chest sometimes when they were just lying together, or started at him sadly, contemplatively, when she thought he was asleep.

What he couldn’t figure out was Wyatt.

The guy said he wanted to bring Jess back, that he wanted to help her, get her back on their side. But then he would watch Lucy walk around the bunker like he was a kicked dog outside in the rain, waiting to see when he’d be allowed back in the house.

Flynn started to figure it out when he found Wyatt half dead in the kitchen, staring into what was probably his tenth cup of coffee. Wyatt looked up at him, eyes bloodshot, and asked, “Do you think if I’d had her words, she wouldn’t have betrayed us?”

Flynn took the cup from him because Wyatt annoyed the shit out of him but he also made Flynn’s heart tug in an odd way and Flynn was a sucker. “No. The words can’t control you.”

“I don’t have any,” Wyatt told him, words slurring a little from exhaustion. “But you’ve got some.” He put his hand on Flynn’s chest. “Are they Lucy’s?”

Flynn took his wrist, gently removed Wyatt’s hand. Stayed holding onto his wrist, for some reason. “Yes.”

“And she has…” Wyatt’s eyes went wide. “Oh. She has yours. I thought they were weird but—but you’re weird. So it works.”

“I’m flattered that you think so.”

“So that’s it then. It’s the two of you.”

“You don’t sound all that happy about it.”

Wyatt tilted his head and looked at him. “I don’t think I know how to be happy.”

And if that wasn’t a fucking horse kick to the chest. And Flynn had seen horses kick, thanks, he knew how they could fuck you up. Wyatt swayed into him, almost like he was losing his balance, and Flynn was still a sucker, so he let him do it. “You need sleep.”

“Being asleep sucks.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s not the sleep it’s the getting there,” Wyatt continued.

Lucy entered, probably to see what was keeping Flynn. She saw Wyatt leaning his forehead on Flynn’s shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

“He’s punch drunk,” Flynn said.

“My bed’s too big,” Wyatt replied.

Lucy got a contemplative look on her face.

“Absolutely not,” said Flynn.

But he was, still, a sucker.

And that was how Wyatt ended up sleeping over.

“This is the worst decision we’ve ever made,” Flynn hissed.

“This is the absolute best decision we’ve ever made,” Lucy said cryptically.

 

* * *

 

Jiya didn’t say anything but she was definitely judging them.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt wasn’t sure exactly how he wound up platonically sharing a bed with the woman he was in love with and her soulmate but. Hey. At this point his life was so weird that might as well happen on top of it all.

At least he could finally get to sleep. He’d been running on caffeine and self-loathing for weeks.

“This isn’t permanent,” Flynn grumbled. “It’s until we get Jess back and we find you a goddamn therapist.”

Wyatt kept waiting for the day when either of those things happened but… the longer they went on, the more he reached out to Jess… she was reaching back, starting to listen to him about Rittenhouse but, ironically, starting to fade away from him when it came to their relationship.

He didn’t exactly get a therapist, but he did get Flynn. One time he woke up and Lucy was in bed, curled up into a ball, but Flynn was out in the living room.

He padded out there, only to find Flynn sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, his head in his hands.

Wyatt had a feeling he knew what Flynn was thinking about.

He just walked over and sat down on the floor, put his head against Flynn’s knee. “You wanna talk about it?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Flynn’s hand rested in his hair. “Not right now.”

Wyatt just hummed and closed his eyes. Tried not to think about how Flynn’s hand felt.

A few nights later, he was the one up. And Flynn grabbed two beers, pointed at the couch, and said, “start talking.”

And at some point, sleeping very carefully on one side of the bed while Lucy slept basically on top of Flynn on the other side shifted to getting limbs all tangled, Lucy’s hair tickling his nose, Flynn’s breath hot in his ear.

Wyatt didn’t know how to talk about it. It was like they were all now balancing on thin ice, without even knowing how they’d gotten onto such thin ice in the first place. He knew Flynn and Lucy were finding other places and times to have sex, but they never kicked him out. Never said he’d overstayed his welcome.

He didn’t know what he’d do if they did.

 

* * *

 

Lucy stared at the mark on her hip. The mark that said she belonged to Flynn, and he to her.

She had chosen him.

But before him, she had chosen Wyatt.

And she’d never really given him up.

Weren’t the times Wyatt held her so much more important than some ink on her skin? Weren’t the times Flynn kissed her so much more permanent than a smattering of words?

But how could she tell them? How could she ask that of them?

Some people did have more than one set of words on their skin. She was not one of them. But who was to say she wasn’t supposed to? Or that she wasn’t even supposed to have Flynn’s words? Who was to say what _supposed_ even meant?

They had all fallen together. She didn’t think Flynn and Wyatt had even realized it. How they reached for each other in the middle of the night. How one of them would creep out of bed with a nightmare and the other would follow, the both of them somehow thinking she didn’t notice. The way they moved in battle, in sync, not even having to speak, reaching and knowing the other one would already be there.

She just had to find a way to make them see it.

 

* * *

 

Flynn knew what Wyatt was doing, secretly reaching out to Jess, turning her back towards their side. It was kind of an open secret between them all. Nobody stopped him, but nobody talked about it either.

Until he woke up and realized that Wyatt had never come to bed.

He found him in the bathroom, curled up in the shower, but fully dressed.

“She found her soulmate,” Wyatt said.

Flynn crouched down. “How?”

“Emma has a new plan. That last mission we were on, when the Mothership jumped, it was a ploy. They activated the sleeper agent earlier than planned, gave them a different target that they didn’t care about. You knew something was off about the mission, remember?”

He did remember. Something hadn’t felt right. It had felt like too easy of a victory.

Wyatt’s eyes were rimmed red. “While we were on the mission, Emma and Jess jumped back. They made Amy exist again, and then they kidnapped her. They’re holding her, Jess says Emma should be contacting us any day to tell Lucy. She’s Jess’s soulmate.”

Flynn stared. Amy had disappeared after Jess had died, and had stayed nonexistent when Jess came back. They’d never met before, they shouldn’t have met, the odds of it happening were so stacked against them now—and yet.

“She’s choosing her,” Wyatt said, his voice small and cracking. “She’s known me all my life, she’s pregnant with my child, and she’s choosing a woman she just met. I mean—she’s Lucy’s sister, I’m sure she’s a great person but—she’s choosing her. She’s going to betray Rittenhouse for her, find a way to escape with her and join us.

“Not for me. She’s not—she wouldn’t abandon them for me but she’ll do it for her.” Wyatt spat the next two words. “Her _soulmate_.”

Flynn was moving before he even realized it, grabbing Wyatt and hauling him into his arms. It was like tumblers were falling and clicking into place and he understood what had been growing inside of him and he couldn’t let go, not for the world.

And Wyatt—Wyatt clung back.

 

* * *

 

You knew it was a shitty situation when Garcia Flynn was voluntarily hugging you and letting you cry all over him.

When he led Wyatt back to bed, Lucy was sitting up. “Something seemed off,” she said, flicking on the bedside light.

Wyatt knew the moment she saw his face, because she inhaled sharply. “What’s wrong?” she asked, moving aside so Wyatt could sit down next to her.

He couldn’t say it again. He looked up at Flynn.

“Jess found her soulmate,” Flynn said. “She’s choosing her, over Wyatt.”

He didn’t mention the part about it being Amy, which was probably smart. One crisis at a time and all that.

Lucy looked angry. Wyatt shrugged. “I’m a blank,” he said. “I should’ve known it would happen eventually. Not like we were doing swimmingly before or anything.”

Lucy looked at Flynn, who stared back at her. Something dark and yearning was in their eyes and Wyatt couldn’t decipher it, but they evidently understood one another, because then Lucy looked away and took Wyatt’s face in her hands.

“We choose you,” she told him, and then she kissed him. Just the once, very softly.

Wyatt pulled back. Stared at her, looked down at her hip involuntarily, looked back up into her eyes. “But.”

He looked at Flynn. Flynn didn’t say anything, he just nodded. But it was enough.

“We choose you,” Lucy repeated.

Wyatt felt the mattress on his other side sink down, felt Flynn’s hand card through his hair. He turned, eyes sliding closed, burying his face into the side of Flynn’s neck. Breathed him in. Felt Lucy wrap herself around his other side, kissing the side of his face.

He chose them.

 

* * *

 

Jiya wasn’t there when they brought Rufus back, or at least, she wasn’t physically there. But she knew, anyway, because when they met up with her she was already crying.

“They’re back, they’re back, I felt them come back,” she said, running and running and running and grabbing onto Rufus and holding on until it started to look like she’d never let go.

For weeks afterwards, they’d catch Jiya with her feet in Rufus’s lap, his hand wrapped around her ankle, his thumb idly stroking the words.

 

* * *

 

Lucy’s words were a curse, she knew.

Every time she kissed Flynn, she knew she was condemning him. She had chosen to go back in time and start him on this path. His words, spoken to her, starting that chain and looping it back around to the words she’d said, an infinity loop that she wouldn’t have broken even if she’d wanted to, but she knew, it was also their noose.

She felt like her touch was poison. Like every time she let one of them inside of her she was sapping the life from them. They let her into their hearts and their bed, or perhaps she had lured them, but either way she was going to lose one or both of them and it would be because they followed her, would always follow her, words or no.

Sometimes she wanted to shake Wyatt. He touched her like honey, like wine, sweet and soothing, and she wanted to scream at him _run. The world gave you a choice, why would you choose me? Run while you still can._

Sometimes she wanted to slap Flynn. He was like strong whiskey, like wildfire, like shooting stars in her blood, and she wanted to beg him _walk away. Let go of this before it chokes you. Leave me before I kill you._

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Because when they were all tangled up in bed together and Wyatt’s heartbeat was in her ear and Flynn’s arm was around her waist, when she was sticky and sated, her mouth bruised with double kisses, she was so happy it felt like she was going to float away. And she was a selfish, cowardly woman and she couldn’t, didn’t, wouldn’t, give that up.

If her words were a curse, then let her squeeze every last drop of love out of them until her men had to die because there was nothing left of them. They had lived it all.

 

* * *

 

Flynn’s words were his damnation.

Lucy had set him on this path. And she had chosen him because she trusted him—but her words were gone when they met in São Paulo. That meant he was dead, and not too long after the present moment.

Well, if he was going to be damned, he was going to earn it.

He surprised Wyatt by pressing him into walls, kissing the life out of him, whispering, “think you can keep quiet?” and rolling their hips together. He slid up behind Lucy in the shower, kissed down her neck, wrapped his arms around her, delved between her legs, drank up her moans.

He smuggled back little presents from their trips, ones that made Wyatt splutter to hide his blush and Lucy scold him while smiling.

He loved them with everything that he had.

Sometimes Lucy would give him this look and he would know what she was thinking about. That she was blaming herself. But even if she thought she was the reason he ended up dead, how could he be angry with her when she gave him a second life? He would have died if not for her. He would have ended it. She gave him purpose. She gave him Wyatt. She gave him her.

Wyatt knew—they’d told him, they’d had to tell him. Wyatt didn’t blame Lucy either. But sometimes he’d just walk up to Flynn and hug him fiercely, fingers trembling, jaw clenched.

“Don’t be scared,” Flynn would tell him. He’d still have Lucy, and Lucy would never abandon Wyatt, just as Wyatt could never abandon her. They’d have one another, after he was gone.

And could it really be called damnation, anyway, when all the words meant was the end? The end was just a moment. A single moment. He got to have a plethora of moments, piled up on top of one another, spilling over, until it felt like he couldn’t even contain all that he was feeling. Holding Lucy’s hand. Laughing with Wyatt until his sides ached. Those were what mattered. Not the bookends. The middle. Because the bookends were just one, but the middle was vast and beautiful.

The middle was what mattered.

 

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, Wyatt still got insecure.

Rufus and Jiya were just so damn cute and connected all the time. When Jess and Amy got back to them, Jess looked at Amy like she was the sun, shining and brilliant and warming up everything, bringing color.

How could Lucy and Flynn think of him as anything but extra, when he saw how perfectly soulmates fulfilled each other? He hadn’t ever been able to fulfill anyone.

But Lucy and Flynn always seemed to sense those moments. Wyatt would sleep in the middle on those nights. Lucy would hum some soft tune, and Flynn would card his fingers through Wyatt’s hair. And he’d fall asleep with their words in his ear, _remember, we chose you. We’ll always choose you._

He’d meant it, when he said to Flynn he didn’t know how to be happy. But he was learning. He was learning every time that he and Flynn stayed up late and he talked about his dad and the army and all the rest until his voice gave out. He was learning every time that he apologized for being an asshole and Lucy let him talk it out and then forgave him because she was a saint. He was learning every time that one of the two, or both, would walk over to him and hug or kiss him, like nothing made them happier than just being with him.

When they were on a mission and someone asked Flynn who his soulmate was, Flynn had pointed at both Wyatt and Lucy and said, “they’re over there.”

The warm feeling in his chest—Wyatt was pretty sure that was happiness.

But there were times when he could feel the ache in his chest and he would be certain, so certain, that he wasn’t going to be enough. That he was expendable.

One day, Lucy somehow acquired a set of permanent markers.

“I have a game,” she said, in that sweet-sly voice she used when she had a very R-rated idea that she was hoping Wyatt and Flynn would go along with.

They wrote on him for what felt like hours, coming up with words to say. _Don’t call me ma’am_ went onto his inner right arm. _We’re not so different_ was written by Flynn on the outside of Wyatt’s thigh. _You made me love you_ went on his stomach. _Congratulations_ was on the sole of his foot.

“I absolutely draw the line there,” Wyatt said when Lucy, almost collapsing with laughter, tried to write on his dick. “And I don’t mean that in a pun sort of way.”

Flynn nearly fell off the bed and Wyatt and Lucy had to grab hold of him to keep him upright.

Things had sort of gotten derailed after that. Mouths and hands had replaced markers, and words had definitely gotten smeared.

But in the morning when Wyatt had looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, he could definitely still see most of the phrases winding all over him.

“You could get a tattoo,” Flynn pointed out, the words mouthed against Wyatt’s jaw.

“Who cares?” Lucy replied, letting Wyatt pull her into his side. “The universe glitched. We know you’re ours, and we’re yours, and that’s that.”

And for as long as they had, however it ended…

That was that.

**Author's Note:**

> The line "if you play your cards right" that Lorena says to Flynn was made up by extasiswings, and I just had to give it a shoutout.


End file.
